Raja Ampat Dive Sites

Central Raja Ampat

Blue Magic

Our favourite dive site in Raja Ampat is probably Blue Magic in the middle of central Raja Ampat, just a 20 minute boat ride from Waisai. This is the dive site where you’ll have the biggest chance of seeing Oceanic Mantas. It’s a fairly small pinnacle, with the top being 12 metres from the surface. On the sea bed you’ll find wobbegongs, leaf scorpion fish and other small critters like the amazing pygmy seahorse. With a bit of current you’re pretty much guaranteed some fantastic action diving with grey reef sharks, schooling jacks, tunas, bumpheads and barracudas. Blue Magic will never stop surprising us with it’s magic!

Melissa’s Garden

Melissa’s Garden is one of the most beautiful dive sites in Raja Ampat. This site has some of the most stunning hard corals, lit up by the sun beams at 5 metres, making it perfect for new divers! If you’re looking for the weirdly wonderful wobbegong shark, you have a great chance to see one here, and if you want a bit of action, pop out to the ridges which are surrounded by thousands of fusiliers.

Chicken Reef

Close to Blue Magic you find Chicken reef which looks like a chicken from above. With a sandy bottom at 20m, this is a great spot to find dive and find garden eels, huge schools of black snapper, fusiliers, and butterflyfish. There’s really something for everyone diver, keep your eyes open for macro life and you can find pygmy seahorses, pipefish, nudibranchs and flat wroms, and occasionally something big will swim by like mantas or grey reef sharks.

Arborek Jetty

Arborek is a small island village with a short jetty, underneath which are massive schools of fish which you can get completely lost in! There’s no other site like Arborek, where you can also find cuttlefish, octopus, and both electric and giant clams. This is a shallow site and currents are usually not that strong making it a calm and easy dive, perfect for night dives.

Manta Sandy & Manta Ridge

These are great spots to dive with the wonderfully graceful manta ray. These majestic creatures can be observed year-round at Manta Sandy where it’s not uncommon to meet more than ten in a single dive and if you’re really lucky you might even spot the rare ‘Black Manta’. Here there’s two options depending on what the currents are doing, Manta Sandy being perfect for beginner divers, or Manta Ridge which is only for experienced divers that feel comfortable in strong currents.

The Passage

The Passage is one of the most unique dive sites in Raja Ampat. You jump into the small gap in between the islands of Waigeo and Gam, only 20m apart at the narrowest point, with the mangrove roots making it feel like you’re diving through a jungle river with stunning coral on the bottom. With everything from colourful nudibranchs to bumphead parrotfish it’s a truly amazing experience when the tides starts pushing the water through and it becomes almost like a rollercoaster!

Sardine Reef

Sardine Reef, a submerged sloping coral reef should be dived in current to ensure plenty of fish life. It’s excellent for big stuff as you’ll see schools of fusiliers, rainbow runners, barracudas, sweetlips, giant trevallies, Spanish mackerel, grey reef sharks and much more. If there is current, you can get plenty of hunting action and hear underwater thunder when the small fish move fast as the tunas strike the bait ball.

Cape Kri

Cape Kri is probably the most famous site in Raja Ampat, being the dive site that holds the record for the highest number of fish species on one site – with 347 recorded in a single dive! It’s a beautiful wall with a ridge that splits the current which attracts all sorts of action from schools of tuna, barracuda and trevallies as well as the big stuff with black and white tip and grey reef sharks regularly spotted here.

North Raja Ampat

Black Rock

An immense dive site on the west coast of Kawe Island you need to do at least 2 dives here to do it justice. Typically we enter on the northwest side over a few small pinnacles covered with soft corals and sea fans, then finding the massive bushes of black corals that host schools of sweetlips and snappers. If you look out into the blue you might see the occasional manta gliding by, with marble rays in the deep and turtles having a rest on the reef.

Pearl Farm

Located in the stunning Alyui Bay you’ll find the famous Pearl Farm. Full of critters, this site is perfect for a night dive, so before diving here, be sure to prepare your camera and macro lens for some muck diving. The underwater view of Alyui Bay lets you capture the diverse marine life like nowhere else. With plenty of different types of nudibranchs and crustaceans, lovers of muck will be in paradise!

Eagle Rock

Consisting of 3 famous islands protruding from the surface, Eagle Rock is another huge site where you can do multiple dives. With it’s stunning reefs this dive site is home to the largest population of mantas in the northern part of Raja Ampat, the main reason we dive here is to see all the mantas coming in to the cleaning stations around the rocks. A spectacular spot to dive, the visibility is crystal clear giving you the perfect place to view different types of rays and sharks. Make sure to check the reef close up too, the wonderfully camouflaged ghost pipefish and tiny pontohi pygmy seahorses can also be found here.

Channel 5

Another wonderful dive in Alyui Bay, Channel #5 is a site with great swim-throughs between big rocks, with enormous schools of sweetlips and fusiliers. White tip sharks sleep under the table coral and you can also encounter dolphins, so be sure to keep an eye out for them on your safety stop.

North Raja Ampat

Black Rock

An immense dive site on the west coast of Kawe Island you need to do at least 2 dives here to do it justice. Typically we enter on the northwest side over a few small pinnacles covered with soft corals and sea fans, then finding the massive bushes of black corals that host schools of sweetlips and snappers. If you look out into the blue you might see the occasional manta gliding by, with marble rays in the deep and turtles having a rest on the reef.

Pearl Farm

Located in the stunning Alyui Bay you’ll find the famous Pearl Farm. Full of critters, this site is perfect for a night dive, so before diving here, be sure to prepare your camera and macro lens for some muck diving. The underwater view of Alyui Bay lets you capture the diverse marine life like nowhere else. With plenty of different types of nudibranchs and crustaceans, lovers of muck will be in paradise!

Eagle Rock

Consisting of 3 famous islands protruding from the surface, Eagle Rock is another huge site where you can do multiple dives. With it’s stunning reefs this dive site is home to the largest population of mantas in the northern part of Raja Ampat, the main reason we dive here is to see all the mantas coming in to the cleaning stations around the rocks. A spectacular spot to dive, the visibility is crystal clear giving you the perfect place to view different types of rays and sharks. Make sure to check the reef close up too, the wonderfully camouflaged ghost pipefish and tiny pontohi pygmy seahorses can also be found here.

Channel 5

Another wonderful dive in Alyui Bay, Channel #5 is a site with great swim-throughs between big rocks, with enormous schools of sweetlips and fusiliers. White tip sharks sleep under the table coral and you can also encounter dolphins, so be sure to keep an eye out for them on your safety stop.

South Raja Ampat

Misool

Misool is one of the largest islands in the archipelago, where you can find some of the most distinctive coral reefs in Raja Ampat. These reefs stand out from other dive sites in the area, with their stunning colours of different soft corals, making it look like a rainbow down there! Along with the explosion of colourful coral, the dive sites of Misool have all different types of critters from the peculiar harlequin shrimp to the wonderful mimic octopus, the tiny pygmy seahorse or different types of ghost pipefish. We do multiple dives on our liveaboard around here.

Fabiacet

Fabiacet is a site where you don’t want the dive to end, one of the dive spots in Raja Ampat with the best visibility. With crystal clear water, you can discover all sorts of marine life, you’ll find huge schools of hundreds of triggerfish and bannerfish, and if you’re really lucky you can even see a hammerhead shark in the distance.

Triton Bay

Being very remote and having just one resort here, the dive sites are visited by only a handful of Raja Ampat liveaboards. With nutrient-rich waters, colourful soft corals and the usual biodiversity of Raja Ampat, you can see everything from magnificent whale sharks, majestic manta rays and the wondrous wobbegong shark to the tiny pygmy seahorse, transparent skeleton shrimps and the fabulous flamboyant cuttlefish. Truly a divers paradise!

Boo Island

One of Raja’s most famous dive sites, Boo is named for the 2 swim through holes in the rock. The biodiversity here is incredible! Tiny critters and gentle giants with stunning fans and pristine soft corals make this dive site probably the most photographed too. Octopus, banded sea kraits and a resident school of batfish are just a few of the things tha make Boo truly unforgettable.